On Thu, 2004-02-12 at 10:15 -0500, Jeffrey Stedfast wrote: > several "designing the perfect ui" documents I've read say that more > options means bad ui, and that limiting the number of options makes a > better ui.
I've read a lot of documents that tell me "the perfect way" to do things. A lot of them are a waste of perfectly good paper. Some people spend too much time thinking about these things and not enough time writing code (I do both, professionally). It may sound great in the perfect world of the academics writing this stuff, but it often falls apart in the real world. Fewer options might equal a better UI (a point of which I am not convinced), but it equals a worse program. Frankly, the arrogance of forcing the user to accommodate the software, rather than the other way around, because you think they can't handle a configuration option astounds me. As a software developer, I believe that if the user cannot figure out how to configure the software, the problem is not too many options - the problem is that I have not done my job properly. My background for saying that: I have written software that sells for hundreds of thousands of dollars a copy, has extensive and complex configuration options, is usually configured and operated by users who have never touched a computer before (and often have to be shown how to use a mouse), and can cost the customer thousands of dollars daily if poorly configured. BTW, configuration options are not the only part of the UI. How the window behaves is also part of the UI. I normally look at the configuration window once, but I read and delete emails several hundred times a day. Which is worse: "cluttering up" the configuration window with an extra-but-useful option that the user will see once, or pissing them off hundreds of times daily? Do any of your "perfect UI" documents discuss that? > this can be done by choosing more sane defaults The problem with this statement is that machines have human users. We all have different preferences about how we want our machines to behave. Removing choice from the user to live up to some arbitrary UI ideology is, IMO, misguided. > (which by popular opinion we seem to have done) Not in my opinion, and I could give good reasons why I feel the current behaviour is not the best choice. I won't, because I don't think it would be relevant - my argument is not that the behaviour should be changed, but that the user should have the choice. But don't worry about me, the worthless user - there are other email clients. If I wanted to be told how to use my computer, I'd be using Windows - oh wait, Outlook lets me configure this behaviour. ;-) _______________________________________________ evolution maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/evolution
